Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.

Indeed, most magicians catch the bug as kids. My first audience was my family in Long Island. My first 'assistant' was my mother, whom I levitated on a broom in our living room.

I came up with the term 'mindfreak' because I didn't like the word 'magician.' I felt like I wanted to coin a term that would be basically the reaction to my art. It would be a mindfreak and so that's why I came up with that. But, many people say I'm really a student of humanity and psychology.

You can just go to a magic shop or magic builder and buy what most magicians do, but that's not what I'm about. With 'Mindfreak' on television and 'Believe' live, I want to bring things that people have never seen before. That process is very difficult. It's very challenging, and you never know how long it's going to take - months or years.

First of all, magicians practice a lot. It requires a lot of discipline. Second, you can't be afraid to be a leader, to go onstage, and you learn to have presence. You need to be able to visualize and connect and create. Most important, you learn to think outside the box.

Actors are like magicians. They'll sit there and do all their tricks to each other. It's very competitive, and the goal is to get them bonding, to get them to know the real person as quickly as possible.

I'd go to Coney Island to hang out, and I saw a magician doing a rope trick on the boardwalk. I was fascinated. I guess that's how it started.

I don't think you can say something is or isn't magic. That's what was cool about Houdini, because he was a magician who had a magic show, but he was also an escape artist, and they kind of, over time, blended together. They both kind of enhance each other, I think.

It was just like a digital fixation with cards and math and science and then I started to look at images of great magicians from Houdini down the line.

Magicians lose the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder.

It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets.

Watching foreign affairs is sometimes like watching a magician; the eye is drawn to the hand performing the dramatic flourishes, leaving the other hand - the one doing the important job - unnoticed.

My interest was magic, believe it or not. I became an amateur magician and did something like 400 magic shows through my teen years.

I was damn lucky to choose this profession. I had no idea when I started out that I was really an illusionist and a magician.

And the nature of magic is all in the person's experience. Whether the magician is using a highly complex sleight of hand or he's just got two cards that are the same, it doesn't matter: it's how it's sold and how magical it is for the person that matters.

There's something a bit embarrassing about saying you're a magician. It immediately suggests all these horrendous cliches, let alone that you're a grown-up doing a child's job.

Magic, whether it's mind magic or conjuring, is about the cheapest and quickest way of impressing people, and I think if you don't grow out of that as a magician then it shows, and people get a bit sick of that after a while, because it starts to feel like posturing. So I grew out of it.

I never quite know how to describe what I do. I normally just say, 'Oh, I'm a magician', which probably puts fairly naff ideas in people's minds but is pleasantly conversation-stopping.

That's how I lived for 10 years in Bristol after graduating. I just stayed in my student flat and paid very little rent. It was lovely, and part of me still misses that very lazy lifestyle. I was known as the magician on the street, and I used to dress a little eccentrically in a cloak.

Mentalist is the technical term for what I do and it covers everything from psychic medium through Uri Geller, through to magicians doing tricks with a mental theme.

It used to frustrate me when I'd get celebrities on my shows and I had to meet them as this ludicrous magician character rather than as myself.

Years ago I was at a function, and I must have said something really rude to Paul Daniels the magician. I can't recall what I said, but I remember him looking utterly crestfallen. I'm not that sort of person, but I must have said something very cutting and belittling. Our paths haven't crossed since, but if they had, I would have said sorry to him.

I don't put a girl in a box and clap my hands three times, and she's gone. I get in the box, and I vanish, and I reappear at the other side of the stage. That way, people don't think, 'That's a great illusion.' They think, 'Doug's a great magician.'

When I was in college, being a magician was not the classiest thing to be. It was like being a folk singer before Bob Dylan.

I have a policy of not saying anything negative about anything another magician does.

I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

I beg you I no magician. I can't just wave a magic wand.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

I think several generations of my family had novels in the drawer. You know the montage in 'The Royal Tenenbaums' where each character has produced some sort of minor work? It was like having a magician in the household.

Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.

My first audition for 'The Magicians' came up in conversation with a close friend who, right then, handed me the first book.